Film ***1/2

Spider
and David
Cronenberg are a perfect match of project to filmmaker…after all, the Canadian
director has made a career out of getting inside our minds and toying with the
knobs.In this film, he takes us
through a mystery as it unfolds not in real time, but in the mind of a
schizophrenic who wanders through his own memories and visuals, observing them
along with us.

As
the picture opens, Dennis (Fiennes, in a tour-de-force performance), once
nicknamed “Spider” by his mother, is coming out of an asylum to his new home
at a halfway house run by a cold stalwart (Redgrave).No mention of his mental illness occurs in the film; we
recognize the signs of schizophrenia, but as Cronenberg points out in the
commentary, they didn’t attempt to follow any kind of symptomatic checklist
with this character.

Nervous,
hunched and withdraw, barely speaking apart from mumbling to himself, and
constantly scratching out lines and lines of notes that make no sense, we
experience the workings of Spider’s mind first hand.He keeps harkening back to his childhood, where his mother (Richardson)
and father (Byrne) seem to be having some problems.Or are they?In
Spider’s fractured state, there’s no way of being certain what’s real and
what’s delusion.

For
example, we see scenes that we know can’t be Spider’s memory, because he
wasn’t there to see them.His
father taking up with a ‘tart’ from the local pub, for example.The confrontation that leads to murder.Or the fact that some of the characters in Spider’s mind and life keep
looking oddly familiar to him and us.

This
is a terrific film that keeps you deliberately off balance, but never gets
convoluted or confusing.We know we
can’t always trust what Spider shows us, so for the course of the movie, we
just kind of have to take it all in and begin the sorting out process later.One thing’s for certain…a second viewing is not only probably
required, but eagerly anticipated.

Cronenberg
forgoes his usual style of visual disturbance for a more deeply rooted
psychological one.It’s not the
things he shows us that make us wary, it’s the nagging uncertainty that plays
out in our own minds that both draws us in and keeps us on edge.This is one of his finest works to date.

But
Ralph Fiennes deserves a huge mention, also for turning in one of his finest
works to date.The actor who made a
worldwide impression with Schindler’s List continues to prove he’s
one of the best in the business, and just because he occasionally takes a
lightweight role like in Maid in Manhattan doesn’t mean he won’t
delve into a complex, demanding part like in Spider and deliver the
goods.An Oscar nomination would
definitely be in order, in my opinion.

Credit
also goes to Miranda Richardson, who’s part in the film grows more complicated
as the story progresses.She’s
always been at the top of her game, and like Cronenberg and Fiennes, she turns
in some of the best work of her career with this picture.

Spider
is simply a
well crafted, well acted and imaginative thriller that dares you to put the
pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together, without guaranteeing that every piece you
see actually belongs to the puzzle.

Video
****

Outstanding…for
a film filled with visual clues, you’d want only the best in an anamorphic
transfer, and Columbia Tri Star delivers with one of the year’s best.Colors, images, and lines are crisp, clean and clear from start to
finish, with integrity maintained through all levels of lighting…that’s
extremely important given the number of dimly lit atmospheric shots in the film.The level of detail from close up to deep focus is remarkable as
well…reference quality.

Audio
***1/2

The
most impressive part of the 5.1 audio is how well it conveys the illusion of
space.Certain voices and sound
cues seem to be coming from further away than the confines of your viewing room,
which definitely adds to the creepiness.Dynamic
range is good, and dialogue is mostly clear…I say mostly, because Spider
mostly mumbles throughout the picture, and we really aren’t meant to catch
much more than a word or two here and there.Very nicely done.

Features
***

The
commentary by David Cronenberg is a very welcome addition to your second viewing
of the film, as he not only talks about the making of it and his cast and crew,
but points out a couple of the elusive bread crumbs you may have missed your
first time out.The disc includes
three short featurettes that may just as well been combined into one, but they
document how the film came to be, the making of the movie, and a look at the
terrific cast.Rounding out are
trailers for this picture and others and filmographies.

Summary:

Spider is a psychological thriller for the new millennium.With a knockout performance by Ralph Fiennes in the title role and
masterful, sure-handed direction from the inimitable David Cronenberg, this is
one you’ll want to experience more than once.